Afterlife

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So I focused only on his eyes. “Lucas, it’s me. It’s Bianca.”

He said nothing, just stared at me, utterly motionless. I realized he wasn’t breathing—most vampires did just as force of habit, but it seemed that death had claimed him entirely. No way was I going to let that happen.

“Lucas,” I repeated. “I know you can hear me. The guy I love is still in there. Come back to me.” Once again, I longed for the release of tears. “Death couldn’t keep me from you. And it can’t keep you from me, not if you don’t let it.”

Lucas didn’t speak, but some of the tension left his body, relaxing his hands and his shoulders. He still looked edgy, almost crazed, but some semblance of control had returned to him.

What could I do? Was there anything I could say that would get through to him? Something he would remember . . .

When Lucas had first learned that I was born to two vampires, he had to overcome his revulsion of the undead in order to hold true to his love for me. If he could remember what it had meant for him to accept me for what I was, maybe he could begin to face what he, too, had become.

Haltingly, I spoke his words as they came back to me: “Even though you’re a vampire—it doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

Lucas blinked, and for the first time since he had risen from the dead, his eyes seemed to fully focus. I realized that his fangs had retracted, leaving only the unearthly pallor and beauty of the vampire. In every other way, he looked human. He looked like himself.

He whispered, “Bianca?”

“It’s me. Oh, Lucas, it’s me.”

Lucas clutched me to him in an impossibly tight embrace, and I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. I felt hot tears against my shoulder; I wished I could cry, too. Our legs gave out at the same time, and we sank to the floor together.

I glanced over my shoulder to tell Balthazar and Ranulf to leave us, but they were already halfway out the door.

Once we were alone, I ran my hands through Lucas’s hair, stroked his back, and kissed his cheek. “You made it back,” I said. “We’re together. We’ll be okay.”

“I never thought I’d see you again. I thought you were dead.”

“I am. We both are.”

“Then how—how is this real?”

“I’ve become a wraith. Only, wraiths like me who were born to it, born to two vampires—we have powers the others don’t. I can have a body if I want, at least for a while. If I’d realized before . . . if I could have told you . . . this would never have had to happen.”

“Don’t say it.” His voice was strangled.

We rested our foreheads against each other, and the contact should have been comforting, but we were both so cold.

“My body feels heavy. Wrong. Dead.” Lucas’s hands tightened on my shoulders. “And yet there’s this hunger making me wild. Driving me insane. You’re back in my arms—I’d lost you forever, and here you are—but the only thing I can think about, the only thing I want—” He couldn’t finish; he didn’t have to. I knew all he wanted was blood.

“It will get better.” My parents had always told me so, and weren’t most of the vampires of Evernight proof of that?

Lucas didn’t seem to believe me, but he said, dutifully, “Gotta hang on.”

“Right.”

For a few moments, we simply held each other. The faded film-star faces on the tattered movie posters around us seemed to be watching us, an audience of dark, soulless eyes. When I leaned against Lucas’s shoulder, I tried to breathe in the familiar scent of his skin, but that was gone. Either his scent had been lost when he died, or I no longer had a sense of smell like I had before, or both. So many things had been taken from us.

But not each other, I reminded myself. We have to remember that.

First I had to get him out of the place where he had been murdered. We needed to go someplace better, more familiar. Vic’s house, I decided. We’d hidden out there for the past month or so this summer, while Vic’s family vacationed in Italy. Our little makeshift apartment in the wine cellar wouldn’t be that much more comforting—it was where I had died just the day before— but maybe we could remain there until we figured out what to do.

“Come on.” I took one of his hands in mine. The coral bracelet he’d given me for my last birthday jangled at my wrist. “They’re waiting for us outside.”

“Who’s waiting for us?” Lucas couldn’t seem to focus; it was like he was listening to a cell phone at the same time he was trying to listen to me. Not in a rude way; he just couldn’t help it, which was worse.

“Balthazar—and Vic and Ranulf, too. They came back from Italy after you e-mailed them. Remember?”

Lucas nodded. His hand tightened around mine, so hard it nearly hurt. Lucas didn’t seem to have any way to judge his new strength—and this despite the fact that he already had enhanced power from having been bitten. He worked his jaw, as if practicing biting down, over and over.

If he needed me to be the steady one, I would be. Of course I was better at being dead, I decided; I’d had a whole day’s practice. It had taken me a few hours to get the hang of being noncorporeal. So no wonder it would take him a while to deal with becoming a vampire.

We left the projection room and walked out through the abandoned theater. The scene in the lobby wasn’t pretty: Beheaded vampires lay crumpled on the floor, and I tried not to look at any of the abandoned heads. Vampires didn’t bleed much after death—no heartbeat to pump out the blood—but I noticed Lucas looking hungrily at the few droplets on the floor.

“I know you’re hungry,” I said, trying to comfort him.

“You don’t know. You can’t know. There’s nothing like this.” Lucas’s grimace revealed his fangs. Just the sight of blood had brought them out again. When I had been alive, part vampire, I had experienced the desperate yearning for blood, but I suspected Lucas was right: The craving he felt now had intensified beyond anything I’d ever known.

We walked outside to see Balthazar, alone, leaning on his car in the otherwise empty parking lot. His shadow stretched out, long and broad, in the beam of the nearby streetlamp. Balthazar spoke to me first. “Vic was hanging around out front. The only way Ranulf could get him to leave was to go along.”

“Okay,” I said as we reached him. “Let’s just get out of here. I never want to see this place again.”

Balthazar didn’t move; he and Lucas just stared at each other. For years, they’d loathed one another; only in the aftermath of my death had they been able to work together. Now, though, what I saw between them was total understanding.

“I’m sorry.” Lucas’s voice was rough. “Some of the stuff I said to you—about choices, being a vampire, and everything like that—Jesus. I get it now.”

“I wish you didn’t. I wish you’d never had to understand.” Balthazar closed his eyes for a second, maybe remembering his own transformation centuries ago. “Come on. We’ll get you something to drink.”

With a pang, I realized that Lucas and Balthazar understood each other now on a level that I would never fully grasp. For some reason, it felt like a loss. Or maybe in that moment, with Lucas seemingly so far from me in spirit, everything felt like a loss.

Balthazar drove us back toward the nicer neighborhood in Philadelphia where Vic lived. Lucas and I sat together in the backseat, his hand gripping mine tightly, his gaze focused in the distance beyond the windshield. Sometimes he frowned and closed his eyes like a person in the throes of a migraine; his feet moved restlessly against the floorboards, as though he were pushing back, or attempting to push through. He didn’t want to be here, to be contained—everything around him now was just one more thing between him and the blood he needed. I knew better than to try to get him to talk. After he’d had something to drink, then he would be okay. He had to be.

Balthazar broke the wretched silence by turning on the radio, classic jazz, the kind of thing my dad used to listen to around the house. As Billie Holiday crooned about foolish things, I wondered what my parents would say now, and whether there was any advice they could have given us. We’d parted badly before I ran off with Lucas at the beginning of the summer; at the moment, I missed them so much it hurt. What would they think of everything that had happened in the past couple of days?

I glanced at Lucas—the pale, cool stillness of his flesh, the way that death had brightened his eyes and carved out his cheek-bones—and thought bleakly, Well, they always wanted me to endup with a nice vampire boy.

The car turned onto the road where Vic lived, an upscale area with broad yards separating the palatial homes. As every house had a four-car garage, we rarely saw other cars out on the street, but there were three right in front of Vic’s house. Not the usual kinds of Mercedes or Jaguars that drove around here either—these were beat-up trucks and station wagons. Something about this began to feel familiar.

Then I realized nearly a dozen people were standing in the street and in Vic’s yard. When I glimpsed a stake in one man’s hands, I realized at least that some of them were armed.

“Is this Charity’s tribe?” Balthazar said. “Is she still after Lucas?”

I remembered the e-mails Lucas had sent out just before my death, when he’d been so desperate that he’d asked anyone and everyone for help, even people we had every reason to expect to turn against us. His messages had been answered.

“It’s not Charity,” I whispered. “It’s Black Cross.”

Chapter Two

“BLACK CROSS,” BALTHAZAR REPEATED. IF I HADN’T been there when Black Cross captured Balthazar—and tortured him—I might have thought he was being very calm about the fact that a band of vampire hunters had showed up. Instead, I could see the hints of fear and anger submerged in his gaze. His fists tightened around the steering wheel. “We should get out of here.”

“We can’t just leave Vic and Ranulf!” I said.

Then Lucas leaned forward and whispered, “Mom?”

I saw her, too: Kate, a Black Cross cell leader and Lucas’s mother. Her honey gold hair, so like her son’s, shone beneath the streetlamp’s light; shadows etched the firm muscles of her arms and the stake she wore at her belt. When Black Cross had learned of my true nature and cast us out of their cell, they’d kept her away. I’d always believed this was because of Kate’s fierce love for her son, which was often hidden beneath her discipline and duty but was undeniable. Was it strong enough to sustain them now?

“It’s okay,” I said to Balthazar. “She brought some friends and came here to help Lucas, not to hunt. See?” Pointing, I showed him where another Black Cross hunter was at the front door, apparently asking Vic a lot of questions while Vic did a bad job of looking casual.

“These ‘friends’ are some of the hunters who captured me and discovered you, Bianca,” Balthazar said. “They might have come here to help, but once they see us, all bets are off.”

“I need to talk to her,” Lucas said. “If you guys want to go, go.”

I wasn’t afraid for myself; these hunters knew little about the wraiths and would be unable to hurt me. That didn’t mean I wasn’t afraid. “Do you think Kate can protect you from them? And Balthazar?”

“She’ll hold off if I tell her to,” Lucas insisted. “And what about you?” Balthazar said. His hands only clutched the steering wheel harder. “Who’s going to hold you off?”

Lucas glared at him. “I won’t attack my own mother.”

“You think that now. Wait until you get out there and smell fresh blood. You’ll be able to feel her pulse, almost—like a magnet, drawing you in.” Balthazar knew too well what he was talking about; his first act after being turned into a vampire had been to murder his own sister. Also, the hunters had begun paying attention to our car, moving closer. Balthazar continued, “If we’re going, we need to go now.”

“We’re not going.” Lucas’s jaw was set, his stare resolute. “I can handle it. I’ve got to. And—come on, it’s my mom.”

As he slid out of the backseat, Balthazar glanced at me in the rearview mirror, like I was suddenly going to take his side versus Lucas’s and run away. If Lucas trusted himself, then I would trust Lucas. I simply stepped out behind him. Balthazar could get out of the car to back us up or not; I didn’t care.

“Lucas?” Kate said. She jogged toward him, a smile lighting her face for the brief moment before she saw me. In the distance, I could see the hunters walking toward us and away from Vic’s house, and Vic slumping against his doorjamb in relief.

“Mom.” Lucas remained still, as if frozen to the spot. His features tightened, and I could tell that he was staring at her throat. What Balthazar had said was true. He could feel her pulse—sense her blood.

Kate’s eyes narrowed as she came closer to us. “Thought you were supposed to be sick,” she said. Distrust and contempt laced her every word. “So sick you couldn’t move.”

“I was,” I said. “But—not now.” I couldn’t exactly claim to have gotten better.

“No more reason for Lucas to stick around, then.” Kate held out her hand to her son. “You can come back. It’s okay. The people who would hold it against you—we don’t need them. All you have to do is realize you made a mistake.”

Lucas didn’t take her hand. “I didn’t make a mistake.” His voice was thin, his words forced. His eyes glittered brightly in the dim light, and I could sense the waves of killing madness washing over him. Yet he stood his ground. “I love Bianca. I made my choice. But . . . I’m glad you came.”

Movement in the farther distance caught my attention. My eyes widened when I recognized two of the hunters in this small group, standing at the far side of Vic’s lawn—a heavyset, dark-skinned woman with her hair in thick braids, and another with golden skin and hair sheared crazily short against her scalp: Dana and Raquel. Dana had been Lucas’s best friend since they were little kids, and when my true nature had been revealed, she was the one who had helped us escape. Raquel had been my best friend and junior-year roommate at Evernight Academy, and the victim of a terrible wraith haunting ever since childhood. She had run away with Lucas and me, joining us when we’d become part of Black Cross.

Raquel was also the one who had turned me in to Black Cross when she’d realized I was the child of vampires.

They loved each other. Would Raquel have come around to Dana’s way of thinking and stand with us now? Or would Dana side with Raquel instead of the old friend who had abandoned her?

I turned away from them, focusing entirely on Lucas. Kate stood only a couple of feet away from him. Although she radiated disapproval, I could tell that it was only me she loathed; for her son, she had an uncertain smile. “Lucas, think about this,” she said. “We’re not only your cell. We’re your family. Because family’s not just about blood—it’s about what you share, what you believe.”

Lucas winced when she said blood, but Kate didn’t seem to notice. She was too angry at me, and too worried about him.

“Bianca can’t have told you what she was at first,” Kate said. “She lied to you.”

Although Lucas and I had gotten past the fact that we’d kept so many secrets from each other at the start, the memory of our old mistakes stung.

Kate continued, “Are you going to forget your duty, forget everything else you learned, and throw away your whole life chasing after some girl who lied to you? I think you’re smarter than that.”

He had thrown his life away, literally dying in an attempt to avenge me. The reminder of what he’d lost to be by my side scalded me with shame. Lucas didn’t notice—he shook with the need to restrain himself. His need for blood had become so overpowering that I could tell he might break.

“I need to talk to you.” Lucas’s voice sounded ragged with strain. “Please, Mom, can the two of us just . . . talk for a while? I have a lot to tell you. A lot of stuff I need to make sense of.”

Concern made Kate stop trying to convert him and start listening. “Lucas, are you okay? You look pale, and you’ve obviously been in a fight—”

“I’m—” His throat choked off the word fine. “We have to talk. That’s it. I need you to come through for me on this.” His eyes met hers. “I really need you to do that.”

Kate’s expression softened. The mother had won out over the fighter. “Okay.”

She took another step toward him and held out her arms. Lucas paused only a moment before embracing her tightly. I saw him grimace as he took in the scent of her blood—but he didn’t break.

He’s done it, I thought with delight. Lucas can control the blood hunger.

Then Kate’s arms tensed, and her eyes went wide. I realized that, for the first time, she saw that the blood staining his T-shirt was his own—and she saw the wound at his neck. The wound obviously caused by a vampire’s bite.

If I had noticed how cold Lucas felt to the touch, then his mother could, too.

Kate jerked away from him, leaving Lucas to stumble back in confusion. Her hand went to her stake. “What did Bianca do to you?”

Lucas took a step toward her, eyes pleading. “It wasn’t Bianca. Mom, just listen.”

“Ask the others to leave,” I said. Maybe Kate had a chance to accept her son as whatever he had become, but I didn’t want to take my chances on the rest of the Black Cross hunters. “Let Lucas explain.”

“You’ve been killed.” Kate’s voice was almost a sob. “You’re a vampire.”

There was a ripple of gasps and whispered curses from the other hunters. Dana hid her face against Raquel’s arm for a moment. I glanced behind us at Balthazar, who remained behind the wheel with the car’s motor idling.

Lucas kept his eyes locked with his mother’s. “Yes. I am. It’s not like they told us, Mom; I’m different but I’m still me. At least, I think I’m still me. This is . . . weird and scary, and I need to find out if there’s any way for me to be the person I was before. Please help me do that.”

Kate straightened. She never looked away from him, her gaze as cool and hard as iron. “You’re the shell of what my son used to be. I loved him more than a monster like you can ever know—”

“Mom, no,” Lucas whispered.

She acted like she hadn’t heard. “And you can taunt me with his voice and his face only as long as I let you.” Though her voice trembled, Kate pulled out her stake, her grip sure. “All I can do for Lucas now is give him a decent burial. And that means ending you.”

“Lucas!” I grabbed his arm to pull him toward the car, but he twisted away from me, as if unable to believe that his mother could do this to him. Then she swung at him so fast that he stumbled as he dodged the blow.

Most of the other hunters began running toward us. Ranulf burst from Vic’s doorway, ax in hand, courageously jumping into the fray despite the likelihood that he’d be staked and beheaded. None of that scared me as much as what was happening to Lucas.

Wham! Kate’s fist hit his jaw, and his expression went blank.

Wham! Lucas blocked one of her blows, and he narrowed his eyes, baring his teeth in rage.

Wham! This time he hit her. His fangs extended. I knew then that the threat had pushed him over the edge. The blood madness gripped Lucas now. He was fighting to kill.

I pulled at the clasp of my coral bracelet, the one Lucas had given me for my birthday—and my tether to corporeal existence. When it fell onto Vic’s lawn, I felt myself become lighter, insubstantial.